Messi, Barcelona now have Intel inside their shirts

Here’s how valuable European soccer has become to sponsors: Now companies are buying advertising space on the inside of team uniforms.

La Liga giant Barcelona has signed an agreement with Santa Clara-based chipmaker Intel in which the company’s logo will be printed on the underside of the team’s jerseys, meaning it will be visible only if players decide to lift their shirts for any reason. The ads reportedly will cost Intel a very visible $34.3 million.

The shirts will make their debut Saturday when Barcelona meets Villarreal at the Camp Nou, although there’s a good chance no one will notice.

Shirt sponsorship has become a lucrative business for Barcelona, whose star, Lionel Messi, is among the most widely known athletes in the world. Barca did not accept shirt sponsorship offers until 2003, when it partnered with UNICEF. In 2011, it accepted a deal with Qatar Airways that pushed the UNICEF logo to the back of the shirt. That deal will pay the club $269 million over the next three seasons, plus bonuses for a UEFA Champions League win.

But that pales in comparison to the $573-million agreement that English club Manchester United signed with General Motors to put the Chevrolet logo on its kit beginning next season.

Unlike those visible ads, however, there is no guarantee anyone will ever see the Intel logo.

“We do not want to put the players under any obligation to show the logo a specific number of times,” Deborah Conrad, Intel’s chief marketing officer, told Reuters. “But we do know that such goal celebrations are a big part of the culture of the sport.”

Under the terms of the deal, Intel also will provide technology to Barcelona that will “improve their research, training and performance via the most up-to-date technologies.”

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